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Sleep Apnea

What is sleep apnea?

Sleep apnea is a common and serious sleep disorder in which you have one or more involuntary pauses (apneic events) in breathing or shallow breaths while you sleep. Sleep apnea usually is a chronic (ongoing) condition that disrupts your sleep. When your breathing pauses or becomes shallow, you’ll often move out of deep sleep and into light sleep. These events are usually accompanied by snoring between apnea episodes. Sleep apnea may also be characterized by choking sensations. During the apneic event, you can’t breathe in oxygen or exhale carbon dioxide. This results in low levels of oxygen and increased levels of carbon dioxide in the blood. This alerts the brain to resume breathing and cause an arousal. With each arousal, a signal is sent from the brain to the upper airway muscles to open the airway. Breathing is resumed, often with a loud snort or gasp. Frequent arousals, although necessary for breathing to restart, prevent restorative, deep sleep. As a result, the quality of your sleep is poor, which makes you tired during the day. Sleep apnea is a leading cause of excessive daytime sleepiness.

The main types of sleep apnea are:

Obstructive sleep apnea happens when air can’t flow into or out of the nose or mouth although efforts to breathe continue. In this condition, the airway collapses or becomes blocked during sleep. This causes shallow breathing or breathing pauses. When you try to breathe, any air that squeezes past the blockage can cause loud snoring. Breathing usually resumes with a loud gasp or body jerk. These episodes can interfere with sound sleep, reduce the flow of oxygen to vital organs, and cause heart rhythm irregularities.

Central sleep apnea, the airway is not blocked but the brain fails to signal the muscles to breathe due to instability in the respiratory control center. As a result, you'll make no effort to breathe for brief periods. It is less common than obstructive sleep apnea and snoring typically doesn't happen with central sleep apnea.

Complex sleep apnea syndrome, also known as treatment-emergent central sleep apnea, occurs when someone has both obstructive sleep apnea and central sleep apnea.

Multiple sleep latency test (MSLT) measures the speed of falling asleep. People who fall asleep in less than 5 minutes are likely to need some type of treatment for sleep disorders.

Home sleep tests measure heart rate, blood oxygen level, airflow and breathing patterns. The test results will show drops in the oxygen level during apneas and subsequent rises with awakenings if you have sleep apnea.

Treatment

Sleep apnea is a chronic condition that requires long-term management. The goals of successfully treating sleep apnea are to restore regular breathing during sleep and relieve symptoms such as loud snoring and daytime sleepiness.

# SLEEP APNEA BY THE NUMBERS #

Sleep apnea occurs in about 25% of men and nearly 10% of women.

People who are obese have 4x the risk of sleep apnea than people who are a normal weight.

Smokers are 3x more likely to have obstructive sleep apnea than are people who've never smoked.

It is estimated that as many as 18 million Americans have sleep apnea.

Sources

"What Is Sleep Apnea?" National Heart Lung and Blood Institute. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 10 July 2012. Web. 18 May 2017.

World Sleep Day is an annual event organized by the World Sleep Day Committee of the World Association of Sleep Medicine (WASM) since 2008. Its purpose is to celebrate the benefits of good and healthy sleep and to draw society’s attention to the burden of sleep problems and their medicine, education, social aspects, and driving; as well as to promote the prevention and management of sleep disorders.

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